Green
by librarian-byday
Summary: The bread jokes are fun, but don't forget that Peeta loves painting, too. Mockingjay spoilers. Peeta and Katniss take a trip to District 4. Angst, paint, and cuteness happens.


The bread jokes are fun, but don't forget that Peeta loves painting, too.

Peeta and Katniss take a trip to District 4. Angst, paint, and cuteness happens. Someone tell me, why is there no character tag for Finnick and Annie's baby?

Post-Mockingjay, pre-epilogue.

* * *

><p>The sound of the waves crashing into rocks and over sand accompanies my brushstrokes rather nicely. I've never painted to a soundtrack like this before. It stirs up something inside me. Something unusual, yet vaguely familiar. Calm. Clarity. Both nearly foreign concepts to me, feelings left stagnant years ago, now awakened suddenly with a rush of salty sea air.<p>

It took us a couple of years, but Katniss and I finally made ourselves get out of District 12 for a while. It was Haymitch's idea, though he'd be the last person besides us to put that advice into practice. Katniss and I were both hesitant to leave the comfortable ruts we'd forged for ourselves in our respective homes, and the idea of an extended trip together didn't really appeal to either of us - we're still not quite there yet. But, after a while, we had to admit our current situation left us feeling trapped. Heavy. Cramped. Empty. Our collective list continued until we both conceded that we needed to get out. We needed fresh air. We needed to finally witness the rebuilding of our world first-hand instead of privately mulling over its destruction.

And we needed to pay a visit to Annie and Baby Finn.

Well, I suppose he's not exactly a baby anymore. All we knew about him up until this point came from letters and photographs. Of course we both came to District 4 expecting to see a three-year-old boy, but having the dark-haired toddler wrap his tiny arms around my knees the moment I walked through the door was something I never could have prepared myself for.

We're not calling it a vacation. We hate that word. It implies a luxury neither of us could've had before, and we still can't bring ourselves to trust that our world has changed any of that. But we did need a change of pace. And we did promise Annie a visit. And if Katniss is up for seeing her mother while we're here, we can do that, too, but I know better than to insist. For now, though, today's not such a bad day to spend at the beach.

So now I'm taking in the sensation of sand shifting between my toes as I stand before my easel, changing my weight to my good leg. I'm discovering the feeling calms me almost as much as the brush in my hand does. That makes me start to wonder, though, if I've been clinging too tightly to this, if I should be concerned about my dependence on paints and canvases. I consider the scores of pieces I've created over the years, the stacks of memories cluttering up my house. Eventually, I'm going to run out of space. I won't have any places left to hide the ones I don't want Katniss to see - which, lately, have been most of them. Is it wrong that this is the only thing that makes sense to me sometimes?

I loosen my grip on the brush in my hand, reposition it between my fingers, and try to convince myself that this painting's different. My subject this time is simple, softer. Not shiny. I'm capturing a moment rather than purging a nightmare. And the moment I'm portraying, the moment I'm in right now, is well worth preserving.

I dab a bit more white around the rocks where the foam bursts just below Annie's feet. She works a frayed piece of rope between her slender fingers, and I have some trouble duplicating the complex knot she's tying. I linger a bit too long on Katniss's hair, the dark tendrils splayed across the sand as she naps soundlessly on a blanket. The image of little Finn trying to build a sandcastle I have to finish recreating from memory, as he's since toddled over to watch me work.

For a long while, we're silent. Finn inexplicably latched on to me since our arrival, yet he's still shy enough not to speak. And I have no clue what I should say to him. I never thought about what it would be like to see those sea green eyes in person for the first time, and the overwhelming guilt I feel around the boy makes it difficult to speak to him. But he stares up at the easel so intently, so genuinely curious in what I'm doing, that I know I have to acknowledge him somehow.

It takes some effort, but I do manage to catch his eyes, nodding at my canvas and forcing out, "How's it look so far?"

The boy gazes back at me for a moment blankly, maybe a bit startled, and I wonder if I should have just stayed quiet. Then he scrunches up his mouth in thought and turns back to study the painting. "Needs more orange," he says, pointing at my rendering of the sunset.

A small grin creeps up on me. "I think you're right," I say, and I get to work swirling the right shades together. The boy moves in closer to the easel, closer to me, and watches with fascination as I layer different orange hues along the horizon. He has to tilt his head back to peer up that far, and when I look down at him I have to see those familiar eyes again. My brush freezes on the canvas for a moment. I swallow back the tightness in my throat and make myself talk again.

"This, right here," I say, bringing the paintbrush down to him so he can have a better look. "This is my favorite color, you know."

My intent is to prompt him to tell me his, which works because he smiles at me and says, "I like green!"

"You do?" Before I know it, I'm kneeling down in the sand in front of him, meeting his eye level. "Did you know that's Katniss's favorite color, too?"

His eyes widen. "Really?"

I nod. "Sure is. I think she likes green because she likes the woods so much."

The boy ponders this for a moment, the reasoning I've given him. "I think I like green because . . ." He has to have a reason, now, too. ". . . because Mommy says that was Daddy's favorite color."

And there it is again. The guilt, the pang of nausea that grips my stomach and traps my tongue. Conversation used to be so effortless to me. Words used to come so naturally. But now I doubt I can keep talking to this kid, this spitting image of his father, much longer.

The boy remains oblivious to my discomfort, however, and he seems to have gotten over his shyness as words continue to bubble out of him. "He liked a special kinda green," he says, and I'm realizing the effort the little guy has to put into his explanation, into the evolving sentence structure he struggles to keep up with. "Like the water," he tries to clarify.

"You mean like a sea green?" I ask.

He looks confused. The setting sun is sapping the desired shade from the expanse of water in front of us. Before I fully realize what I'm doing, I have my palette in front of me and I'm smearing together a variety of pigments. Finn leans closer, mesmerized by my brush, by the apparent magic it possesses, hues swirling and changing before his eyes until he finally stops me.

"That!" he squeaks, pointing excitedly at the small swatch of color. "That's the green_ I _like!"

This evokes a small smile from me. I can't help it. His fascination with my paints, his response to color. It's a small, nearly imperceptible light I can feel flickering in the dank, dark caverns I so often get lost in nowadays.

"Is that the green Auntie Katniss likes?"

_Auntie Katniss?_

"No, her green is more like this . . . " And I'm mixing memories on my palette now, thoughts both good and bad of towering trees, leaves in the stream bed, rustling pine needles on the forest floor. A picnic in the Meadow over fine, newborn grass, the stem of a dandelion I hold between my fingers as I tell her to make a wish, and the backdrop of forest dappled with sunlight when she turns from me, bow in hand and arrows slung across her back.

"That's closer to her green," I say.

Finn thoughtfully twists his mouth again, carefully considering the shade I just mixed for him. "My green's better," he says.

I feel myself smiling again. "Of course it is."

Conversation comes a little easier between us. My brush steadies me somehow as we talk colors. I mix a few more shades for him, some he knows well, some he can't quite remember the names of but can recall in terms of common objects. The color of the flower he put in Mommy's hair today. Yellow. He doesn't like red all that much, and I can't really blame him for that, and that's when it finally hits me, hard, and I realize just how unfair all of this is.

This boy's father will never know him. Finnick will never know his own son. The thought rephrases itself in my mind over and over again, and I can't escape it. Finnick can never watch his boy grow. He can never teach him how to swim, how to fish, how to build sandcastles, how to tie knots. Again, I fight with myself over how much of this is my fault. I remember the nightmare I had on the train ride here, the panic in Finnick's eyes as I maliciously shoved him down the dark shaft of the sewer, down into the mob of snarling lizard mutts below. It took until morning for Katniss to have me fully convinced that it was not real, but that can't alleviate the guilt still churning in my gut. It certainly doesn't change the fact that Finnick was torn from his family before it began, that he died protecting those who had nothing to lose, that he sacrificed himself for his child he didn't even know existed.

What exactly gives _me _the right, now, to teach this boy that red mixed with blue makes purple? Why am I the one who gets to see his eyes light up at this discovery? Among all the other dark, muddled memories, I still know exactly where I was when Finnick died. Lost, flailing, completely mad and utterly useless. I've done nothing to deserve this.

"Okay, Peeta?" A tiny finger pokes me in the face, snapping me out of my trance.

"Huh?"

Finn looks at me critically, his little eyebrows furrowed in concern, and I'm suddenly embarrassed that I started to lose my grip in front of him.

"You okay?" he asks again.

"Yeah, I'm okay," I stammer, forcing a smile. "Just thinking."

There's a moment of clarity for him. He says Mommy thinks like that sometimes, too.

I have to wonder how much he knows, how aware he is of the world he's been spared from. He's so young, so innocently oblivious, yet I sense an insatiable curiosity about him as he talks to me. There's a dull ache in my chest when he tells me about Annie, about how she covers her ears and how she can't smile sometimes. He's awfully perceptive for one so small, but I can tell he's not completely aware. He can't fully understand the meaning of the pain behind it all. How could he? Again, I'm plagued with the relentless thought that it should be Finnick kneeling in front of this boy. Not me. Definitely not me. And the weight on my shoulders only increases when his son decides to ask me about him.

"Were you and Daddy friends?" Finn says.

Friends. I had never really thought about it. It's an innocent request, but Finn can't see how heavy it is. No question, Finnick was an invaluable ally, both in the arena and on the battlefield. Not only did he contribute to my physical survival, but he even helped me sort through my distorted memories. I never got the chance to thank him properly for what he did, and I was far too lost to reciprocate any kind of friendly actions back to him. I'm honestly not sure if you could really call us friends. There's only one thing I'm truly positive of, though, so I tell Finn because I'm not sure what else I can say.

"Your Daddy saved my life once," I say. "More than once, actually." I'm not sure if he makes the connection, but I certainly have: Finnick saved my life, but I didn't save his.

"Oh," he replies simply, thinking it over. "Mommy says he was really brave."

I nod. My eyes retreat back to my palette and I poke at the paint with my brush. All self-inflicted guilt and pity aside, I really do owe Finnick a lot. I dab around the varying blue shades. Finn watches as I pull in some yellow. As desperately as I can wish to trade places with Finnick, I'm the one who's here. I'm the one little Finn is left with right now. And as inept as I feel, I'm the one who has to make it right somehow.

"Make my green again," he chirps.

I allow myself another smile and start to blend in some more blue. My paintbrush pauses for a moment on the palette, though, as I see a fleck of something on the side of my thumb. Among other stray smudges of color is a spot of green. Not Finn's green. Not Katniss's green. But still a familiar green, one that triggers an old memory, a memory of Finnick and of Katniss, who is still dozing peacefully on the sand.

"I've got a better idea," I say, looking back up at Finn. I instantly see his father in the way he quirks his eyebrow at me, but I make myself smile about it before I give way to self-pity again.

"Did your mommy ever tell you how funny your daddy was, too?" I ask. Finn shrugs, but he's grinning. I take a few tubes of paint and add to my palette. Some blue, some yellow, just the right touch of brown. As the pigments combine, I tell Finn a story. Omitting the gruesome details of the Third Quarter Quell, there's hardly anything left but an amusing anecdote of his daddy conspiring with Katniss, playing a pretty mean joke on the unsuspecting Peeta. Finn's face crinkles in laughter as I spin the memory into a more colorful tale. He knows nothing of the context, but he doesn't have to. Not now, anyway.

I hold up this new shade for him to see, glancing in the direction of the sleeping form distanced from us. "What do you think, little Finn?" I say. "You wanna play a trick on Auntie Katniss?"

The spark in those sea green eyes is undeniable. Even at such an innocent, tender age, the son of Finnick Odair cannot resist a prank.

He fights to keep his face still when the green bristles tickle his face. I add an extra dollop to his nose for good measure. A laugh escapes me as I let him paint my face with his tiny hands. In the end, we both look disgusting, which is the desired effect. But I can't stop smiling at Finn, his attempt to be serious, forehead crinkling underneath the green paint as he puts a finger to his lips.

He leads the way as we tip-toe, rather melodramatically, through the sand. My prosthetic makes me a little sluggish on this terrain, so Finn comes back to take my hand and pull me along behind him. We at last reach our sleeping victim, and when we slowly kneel in front of her, Finn stops for a moment. He looks at me nervously and whispers that I should be the one to wake her up. I suppress a laugh and agree.

We lean in close to her face and I take her shoulder gently. "Wake up, Katniss," I coo in my sweetest voice.

Her reaction when she wakes sends Finn sprawling backwards into the sand in a fit of giggles. I earn myself a swift, solid punch in the arm, but even Katniss can't hold back a smile for very long. Her eyes meet mine, and I know what she's thinking. Little Finn still giggling uncontrollably between us, we remember Finnick. We wordlessly reminisce over one of the very few fond memories we have from our past.

Katniss breaks the moment, giving my shoulder a light shove and calling me an idiot. We laugh together for the first time in a while. I stand, brush the sand off, and help pull Katniss and a giddy Finn to their feet.

That's when I finally notice Annie, still perched on the rocks, looking up from her rope to smile at us. A broad smile, as bright as her son's laughter, easily visible from a distance in the dying evening sunlight.

It's a start, I tell myself. If nothing else, it's a start.


End file.
